


The Resurrectioners

by serenadinsirens



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Afterlife, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Child Death, Death, F/M, M/M, Minor Character Death, Multi, Not Romance, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Polyamory, starts with death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-21
Updated: 2015-07-21
Packaged: 2018-04-10 12:52:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4392626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/serenadinsirens/pseuds/serenadinsirens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the Divine Court tells Michael Jones that they're giving him a second chance for the mistakes he'd made, he'd never expected them to give him /superpowers/.</p><p>Hell, he never expected a second chance in the first place.</p><p>But he supposes he should be thankful, even if they're making him work with all of these other people who are there for, what he assumes to be similar reasons as he.</p><p>Murderers, liars, drug dealers, and thieves, and somehow, they have to trust each other to protect the world from evil.</p><p>Michael isn't even sure what Heaven is thinking anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Resurrectioners

**Author's Note:**

> hello! this is kind of a test chapter to see if anyone is actually willing to read this story so be sure to tell me if you like it. updates are going to be slower than usual, if that's possible. 
> 
> it isn't romance driven, so ships are bound to change if i feel like it.
> 
> enjoy!

It’s always gotta be a bad sign when the most important part of your story begins with you dying.

Michael Jones didn’t know what had happened. One second ago, he could have sworn that he was in the driver’s seat of his mom’s mud splattered blue minivan, hands gripping the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles turned bone white and his teeth bit down against each other in frustration as he spoke, in rapid succession, to his boss on speaker phone. But something had happened… it had to have, right? Because one second he was driving down I-76 and the thunder roared above his head and the rain hit the windshield so quickly that his wipers could barely wipe down a clear space…

...and then he was dead.

There was a light, he remembered; searing, blinding, and white, and Michael’s hands went to his eyes and off of his steering wheel and a loud horn sounded out between the raindrops and the last thing he could remember seeing was the red cursive lettering of “Krispy Kreme” and the image of glazed donuts on the side of a white truck and, without a second of hesitation (seriously, what had happened in that time period? There was no transition, just as if he was in a movie and it was a hard cut from one scene to another) he was on his feet, outside of his mom’s wrecked van, staring down his corpse bent over the steering wheel in the front seat.

Michael supposed that he probably shouldn’t have been on his phone while he was driving, especially not through the thunderstorm.

The sound surrounding him was hard to distinguish, muffled in a sense somewhere between underwater and far away; there was rapid talking, some screams, a woman in a pink jacket was on her knees and sobbing, and, as if it sat in the air above them, sirens cut through the air clearer than anything else. Blue and red luminescence bathed the black top, illuminated the night sky and Michael’s pair of grey vans, policemen crowded the streets and pushed backward at a crowd forming around the scene.

Michael looked down at his hands, and mused at how less different he felt. Surely, if he had gotten into a car accident, there should be some sort of anomaly between how he looked at that second and how he looked ten minutes ago, but his clothes were clean, his body was without imperfection. Something could be said for the version, otherwise, slumped over the steering wheel, blood seeping down from a gash on his forehead, and his brown eyes glazed over, staring at something seemingly in a world beyond them.

Michael mused that maybe, he was looking at him. It was hard to tell.

The feeling of watching yourself on a different plane of existence was a hard one to pinpoint, let alone describe. It was less like looking in a mirror, and more like peering through a window, into a house that you could call home if you hadn’t left it long ago, and someone had taken your place at the dinner table where your family greeted and talked to them as if they had been there from the beginning. Of course, Michael was instead looking at himself, dead, in the living realm, but that same sort of nostalgic (or maybe it was just an unhappy feeling that came with watching the past; less reminiscent. more regret) feeling sunk below the more prominent one twisting the contents of his stomach; the feeling of not belonging.

“My condolences,” a new voice spoke, louder, more clearly than any of the other sounds that plagued his ears and it was then, that he realized, that this person (feminine, he realized; voice of a higher tone, but naturally lax and calming) was speaking to  _him_. He whirled around on his heels, to see a blonde haired woman with tired, but lively ancient eyes and a nurturing smile approach him. Her arms were covered in full sleeve tattoos, and she wore a simple, black sundress. “I know this might be a hard thing for you to take in, so use as much time as you would like.”

He didn’t know exactly what to do, or what the woman expected him to do. Instead of watching the scene, he stared her down, and took note of her hair pulled back and bobby pinned in a bun, and the septum piercing in her nose. If there was anything to follow the video games and movies that he’d spent so much of his time indulging in, he’d assume that this is what everyone considers to be ‘Death’. Or at the very least, the being to carry you on to the afterlife.

“So, what?” Michael spoke, for the first time in what felt like an eternity, breaking the silence surrounding him. “Is this it? Am I, like, dead? Like,  _dead_  dead?”

“I wouldn’t necessarily say that this is ‘it’,” she mused not unkindly, peering over his shoulder to something behind him, “you still have the rest of time to go, kiddo. But if it’s any help, yes, you are ‘ _dead_  dead’. You, over there! Richard Bradbury, I presume? Are you ready to go?” Noticing that she was no longer addressing him, Michael quickly turned around to see a heavier set man in a white shirt and khaki pants looking absolutely  _distraught_.

“I’m…  _dead_?” he gasped out, and grabbed at a cap in his hands, twisting it nervously. The woman nodded solemnly in response and the man, who Michael assumed was ‘Richard’, let out a wail that Michael could have sworn would alert those in the living world of their presence. “Oh  _God_ , how could this have  _happened_? What did I do  _wrong_? What about my  ** _wife_**?!” he grabbed at his ugly mess of blond hair and stumbled backwards as if he were about to collapse at any second. Michael wouldn’t have been surprised if he was.

The woman gave him a sad smile. “There’s nothing you could have done, Rich. This is where you were meant to end up from the beginning. I’m sure your wife will grieve for a while, and then she’ll move on. You’ll be reunited again one day.”

The man sobbed into the crook of his elbow, “what am I gonna do  _now_?”

“I dunno, maybe quit cryin’ like a bitch?” Michael spoke again, rolling his eyes at the ridiculousness of the man in front of him. Seriously, he’s fuckin’  _dead_. What is any amount of screaming going to do to change that? “And, y’know,  _move on_. Like a normal fuckin’ dead person. Christ.”

Richard looked up at him with a more shocked than anything expression on his face, but before he could retort, the woman threw her arm between them. 

"Alright, Jones, let everyone grieve in their own ways. Just because you can come to grasps with your own death, doesn't mean everyone can," she chastised, and Michael could have sworn that if he were a physical being with blood flow, it would have rushed to his face in embarrassment. Instead, he just felt the mild shame unfurl in his chest, like he'd been reprimanded by his mother. The woman looked back at Richard Bradbury with comforting eyes. "Are you ready to move on, Rich?"

Richard wiped at his nose, "do I really have a choice at this point?"

"Not really, no," the woman laughed and it sounded almost like bells chiming, "the question was there more for the sentiment than anything." She snapped her fingers, and ten steep steps appeared seemingly out of nothing, the image tumbling from eight feet in the air, to the ground. They were a glistening marble and accompanied by a winding iron handle, leading all the way up to a golden door that seemed attached to almost nothing. Michael blinked, trying to see if he was imagining this. When he opened his eyes again, though, the image was still there. "Why don't you head up, then? I'm sure your father is waiting for you."

Richard was watching the image with wide eyes, before shrugging and taking a few tentative steps forward. Michael waited until he was on the second step before following after him.

"Not you, Michael. You wait here with me for a bit." 

Michael stopped in his tracks and whirled around to look at the woman who had just spoken to him. Her expression had not changed, she still wore one of kindness and humility, but the way her words slammed through him made her seem almost different. It felt like there was something behind her motherly nature, one that hid behind her compassionate eyes; a cold look of contempt. And he did not move. He stayed very still, looking her over multiple times to see what she might say next.

Because Michael had a feeling that those stairs were the detour to Heaven, right? Their immaculate look and magical, welcoming nature could only suggest such, that they were a one way ticket to the pearly gates. He'd been so ready to climb right on up and move on and see his brother again, but the woman had stopped him, as if that wasn't the route he was supposed to take.

Michael glanced over his shoulder and the staircase was gone.

There are only really two options after death, Michael remembered with a pang of dread; the good place, and the bad place. And if the good place had suddenly closed up before he could get through...

Well, he supposed he shouldn't be that surprised. It's not like he'd lived the most righteous and selfless life in the world, in fact, he'd go as far as to say as he'd lived the most selfish, mistake filled, lonely life that he could have imagined. But he didn't think that he'd been bad enough to go to  _Hell_ , just maybe a little slap on the wrist and a stern talking to.

Maybe he should have prayed a bit more. 

"Why don't we take a walk?" the woman asked with a head tilt that probably meant nothing but made Michael shiver nonetheless, as she stepped aside and revealed and entrance, seemingly sliced out of the world as if it were a painting, and revealing a long, pristine looking corridor that lead far into the darkness. Michael wondered to himself if his gulp was audible, because the woman made no notion that she'd heard it, but the feeling of dread came back into his throat like vomit, and he tried to swallow it back to the pit of his stomach.

"How- how forgiving do the divine leaders tend to be, out of, uh, sincere curiosity?" Michael asked and cursed his voice for wobbling when he gave out a shaky, nervous laugh. The woman didn't make fun, and instead laughed along with him as if he hadn't done so out of anxiety and they were sharing a joke.

"You'd be surprised," is all she said in response, and all it did was raise the suspense back up to his throat. Can spirits throw up?

She turned around and made a subtle gesture for him to follow as she took the first few steps into the long hallway. Michael swallowed back whatever was begging to exit his body and followed, taking his first couple of steps into the hallway and being surprised at what he felt under him. It was carpeted, he noted, an earthy, brick red, and wide enough to fit about three people walking side-by-side. That didn't encourage him to fall in line with the woman. The walls seemed to be normal plaster, but painted an off-white with blue undertones. There were doors every couple of steps that had a golden three digit number on them, each starting with the number 3, and no windows.

It was when he passed by door 312 that he realized that it was like an old doctor's office; the colors were warm and calming, the lamps that hung over head set the lighting at a soothing temperament, the doors set up as if he was on the third floor. As much as an effort they'd been putting into making it comforting, his nerves were still high, and his head was throbbing with fear.

"Who exactly are you?" Michael asked to break the silence, voice wavering from his nerves.

"My name's Griffon," she responded, not looking behind at Michael, but voice strong and resonating off the hallway's walls.

"Griffon?" he questioned at the odd choice of name.

"Yes," Griffon affirmed with a nod, "I'm the Bringer of Souls." She didn't continue after that, and left Michael to his own thoughts. The 'Bringer of Souls'? Is that what they called it? Well, all it did really was affirm his previous notion that she was the one 'in charge' of carrying on the dead. Michael was surprised at how well video games and literature really hit the mark.

They passed by door 333, and it was then that Michael noticed the pair of double doors at the end of the hall. Nothing changed in his surroundings, passing by 334, 335, and 336 respectively, but he noticed how Griffon straightened her back and quickened her stride, the future seeming more impending than it did 20 doors ago.

There was a glowing exit sign hanging right about the pair of polished wooden doors, and Michael gulped and clenched his fists at his sides in preparation.

"Today, Michael Jones," Griffon said as she placed her hand at the silver bar on the door, "is your judgement day." 

The doors swung open with one graceful push, and, even as Griffon walked into the new room with a confident stride, Michael remained inhumanly still and standing static in the doorway. The doors, instead of swinging back shut, froze in place as Griffon made her way to the center of the room, which Michael began to carefully take note of. There was a small desk in the middle, sitting on top of pristine white tile floor, and surrounded by clean woodwork walls. Griffon stood next to the desk with her hands folded carefully in front of her, and looked back at Michael expectantly. That must have been where he was meant to sit.

Michael didn't step foot in the room until a voice boomed out, " _enter_ , Michael Jones."

The voice was insistent, orderly, and commanding, and it hit a space in Michael's spine that had him shiver to the bone, almost jump-starting his body into action as, without even thinking to, he walked with a nervous beat in his step to the desk waiting for him. Michael didn't take the seat just yet, instead looking at his hands, to the desk's surface, up at Griffon's patient eyes, and then back down at his feet.

"Take a seat, Jones," a different, more tired sounding voice said, and Michael followed suit.

It wasn't until he was fully seated that he really saw what was in front of him. Sitting at a large, semi-circle mounted podium were four other men, each looking at him with their hands folded on the surface in front of him. The first on the far left looked more annoyed than anything, with black hair, bushy eyebrows, and a scowl- probably wasn't happy to be there in the first place. Sitting next to him, and more notably straighter was a dirty blond haired man with a clean shaven face and expressionless, objective eyes. On his right, another person with curly brown hair, a stubbled chin, and glasses, who looked more like a teacher than a judge with a face that urged to help. And finally, on the far right was the last man with wiry hair and tired eyes, looking downright  _exhausted._

Michael supposed that this was his jury. The scene looked a lot like a court room, and that Michael was the defendant awaiting his sentencing with Griffon, his lawyer, standing next to him. He wouldn't be surprised to find out that that wasn't exactly far from the truth.

"Michael Vincent Jones," the blond haired man spoke, picking up a set of papers in front of him and flipping through, "case #405672. Born July 24th, 1994 at 1:59 PM EST, died September 3rd, 2015 at 7:13 PM EST. Male, white, 21 years old," Michael shifted uncomfortable as he spoke, not liking the specific details about himself being read out loud, "I'm sure that when you woke up this morning you didn't expect to be in this seat, huh?"

Michael cleared his throat, "uh, not really," he said, voice still speaking loudly even as it wavered underneath the pressure. He looked over at Griffon, and she was continuing to look forward at the small jury without making any gesture and recognizing that he had even spoken.

"Well, you're here, anyways, so let's get this show on the road, then," the man unfolded a pair of glasses that had been tucked away in his white dress shirt and put them on his face, "you just so happened to land yourself into quite the predicament here, Jones. A lot of- forgive me, but  _dumb_  decisions that aren't necessarily ones I, or any of my coworkers here, would consider very  _good_."

"I would go as far as to say that they were  _bad_ ," the curly haired man on his right interjected, "I mean, those were some pretty damn bad choices he made. Look at that, 2009 was a pretty nasty year for you. $1500 of shoplifted items,  _Jesus_ , in what realm would that be considered a good idea?" he was leaning over the blond man's shoulders and pointing at a specific point on the paper. "I know that times were rough financially but you didn't put a dime of that towards your mother. Pretty selfish if you ask me."

Flushing under his words, Michael was quick to respond, "well it's not like she was doing fucking anything to help me, either!"

"You will talk to answer a question and  _only_  to answer a question, Michael," the blond haired man in the middle reprimanded without raising his voice, and if Michael's face could get any redder, then it would.

 "That isn't even the beginning of it. Picked a lot of fights in 2007- well, actually, any year you could, really... stole hundreds of dollars worth of alcohol in 2008," the curly haired man continued, "but that was also the year that Jonathon passed on, so we'll just let that one slide-"

" _Don't_  talk about him! Don't talk about him like that!" the heat rose to Michael's ears in flash of pure anger at the sound of his name, and he slammed his fist into the desk's top and tried to rise to his feet if the desk hadn't been so small and bashed his knee into the table part.

"Hey! Shut your mouth!" this was the first time the man on the far left had spoken, and it was only to angrily reprimand him.

"It's fine, Gus," the man who had mentioned  _him_  spoke again, watching Michael studiously over the top of his glasses.

"'Fine'? Burnie, I'm following  _your_  rules, what the fuck?" the one Michael now identified as 'Gus' continued with his hands thrown in the air in exasperation. 'Burnie' didn't look at him, instead continued to peer at Michael before looking back down at the papers between him and his coworker. Michael supposed that swearing wasn't really considered a sin here then.

"And as 'my rules', I can override them when I wish. It's  _fine_ ," his attention briefly flickered back up to Michael, whose (if it could even be  _called_  that) heartbeat slowed back down and temper simmered rather than boiled, "regardless, you hurt a lot of families in taking those things. Especially when you had a  _job_. That little 'dine and dash' escapade you and your friends went on summer of 2010 really damaged the Martinez family in particular for that entire next year. You  _know_ that'Campers' is family owned!"

"Not to mention your DUI in 2012," the blond haired man said, holding up a particular page in his packet up to his face, "now that is something we should  _really_  pay attention to."

"May 11th, 2012," the man sitting on the far right addressed suddenly, looking downward at a packet similar to the one the man in the middle was reading. His voice matched his tired, aging look, sounding almost bored, "at 9:14 PM EST, Carl Zitnik, age 12, was hit by a dusty grey pickup truck and killed on impact as he was riding home from a friend's house on his bike." He looked up to meet Michael and it felt like all the air left the room, "does that sound familiar to you, Jones?"

Michael doesn't say anything. It felt like the world had tipped over in front of him, hearing the words spoken out loud to him seeming to break the reality that he'd spent the past few years trying to build up. He remembered leaving the party drunk off his ass, and even after Stephanie had begged him not to, he'd still gotten into the car to drive himself home. He remembered the bone chilling 'thud', seeing something roll over his windshield, feel something under his tires, stopping the car all of a sudden, nearly falling out the door, looking the fucking kid in the face-

"And when he's allowed to talk, he chooses to say nothing," the humor in Burnie's voice sounded sinister, even though it was obvious that it wasn't; it felt cold to Michael, it felt  _wrong_ , "what else does it say there, Joel?"

Joel flipped to another page in the packet, looking it over with a frown, "it says that he got out of the car, found the kid on the ground, dumped the body and the bike into a nearby ditch, pried the license plate off of the car, dumped that a block down. And then he told his mom that the car was stolen, but never reported it stolen."

The room was spinning around him as he remembered stay up all night, eyes wide at the ceiling and not realizing he was crying. He remembered what the blood looked like as it swept along with the water from the shower, spinning down the drain of his bathtub. He remembered scrubbing at the bottom of the tub until the orange-ish color was long gone, but he scrubbed regardless hoping that maybe it would erase it from the memory. He remembered his insomnia, the spike in his drinking, not going to the last two weeks of school and feeling like he was dying.

The eyes on him felt frozen with a vile disgust.

"I-I didn't... I didn't know..." Michael must have said, but he never heard the words leave his mouth, they sat in the open air as if someone else had spoken them and he felt  _dizzy_.

"Didn't know what?" Burnie asked and his voice is sharper, almost  _angry_ , "Didn't know that we'd catch you for it? Didn't know that this would count against you? Didn't know that it was considered  _murder_? Look 'vehicular manslaughter' up in the dictionary and see what it tells you next time you get the chance."

Michael couldn't find the will to finish off with  _'I didn't know what to do'_. What could he have done? He could have turned himself into the police, he could have gotten his license taken from him for the DUI- no, he could have gone to jail for negligent homicide, involuntary manslaughter,  _anything_ and he just didn't know how to deal with that. He didn't want to look his mom in the eyes when she found out that he killed that kid. He didn't want to see the family in court. He didn't want to be responsible. 

What was he supposed to  _do_?

Michael said nothing, the words' potential energy drifts off into the atmosphere, and the man in the middle begins to talk again.

"This is really  _really_  bad, Michael. Your future for all eternity isn't looking so good," he looked down at him over his glasses with eyes that had lost their objectiveness and now just looked  _sad_ , "at this rate, you're going to end up somewhere that I'm sure you don't want to be." It felt like tenth grade all over again, in a meeting with his teachers and mother about how he's been making some poor choices and might end up repeating sophomore year. Except, back then they didn't mention burning in Hell until the end of time.

"But," Burnie said and it sounded hopeful, "we also understand that the world isn't necessarily black and white. We see the things that you had to deal with on your own. Your father walking out on you, your brother's death," Michael sucked in a sharp breath at the mention, it was still so close to home, "financial issues, mental illness... it's a hard thing to deal with growing up. You were still a  _kid_ through almost all of this, and we get that. We  _do_. But we can't just... forgive murder, Michael, because you were a 'troubled child'; the world may not condemn you immediately, but you have to  _work_  for that forgiveness."

"So, essentially," the blond haired man in the middle started again, "what we're going to do, Michael Jones, is we're going to give what is, more or less, a second chance."

"A trial, if you will," Joel said from the end.

"We can't exactly put you back in the same world that you were in before," the man said, "what's been done there is done. But what we can do, is put you into a similar one, almost a mirror image of the life you'd been living before, the day after you were supposed to have died. You are going to wake up in a bed a couple cities away, as a living, breathing human being, like we hadn't had this conversation and you hadn't died the night before. It'll be a miracle."

"There is a twist, though," Burnie began, "whether it's good or bad for you, that's your choice to make. What you will wake up with are superhuman abilities that we hope you will use for the greater good. Your abilities have not been determined yet, they are for you to discover and you to use and train as you wish."

"You are not alone, though, Jones," Joel said, watching him with a careful eye, "there are many others just like you that we are sending back along with you, who will wake up in that same building with you. They are criminals who have committed either less severe or worse crimes than you yourself. We hope that you will work together as a team to make right what has been wrong in the world."

And as surreal as this whole debacle had been, this had to be the weirdest part to Michael. Of all the ways he thought the day could have gone, this was probably at the bottom. A second chance? Do those really exist for someone like him? Had he really done enough good or proven himself beyond the bad things he'd done to earn even that? And what was this about superpowers? He thought those only existed in video games and movies and comic books, not a sort of thing that he'd earn in real life. But apparently, the universe is infinite, and there are places out there where people use superhuman abilities to fight crime, or create it.

"You have two months," Burnie said, and it brought his attention from his thoughts back to reality, "and in those two months, you will not be able to die, unless we have deemed you more harmful than good and your fate would be decided for you. At the end of two months, we will return to the Living Realm to assess the decisions you'd made and determine where you will proceed from there. Is that understood, Michael?"

Michael didn't know what do but nod dumbly at them. The blond haired man shuffled the papers back together and folded his hands.

"Good. Your trial will begin in roughly 18 seconds. The Divine Court sends you the best of wishes," he said, and there was a jingle in his voice that made Michael's heart skip a beat.

"Don't fuck it up," is all that Gus spat from the other side of the desk. Rude.

"And don't look down," and as Michael tried to decipher Burnie's warning, (look  _down_  what could that even mean? And what was with that weird  _wink_?), he didn't even notice the floor and desk and Griffon, the Bringer of Souls disappear from around him until he was falling at 9.8 meters per second squared and the only thing he could hear was the wind rushing through his ears.

It was when he peaked a look down at his feet and only saw clouds and infinite sky that he realized what Burnie meant by 'don't look down'. He felt sick to his stomach. The ground was quickly approaching.

And then everything went black.


End file.
